


Flowers?

by IHidMyFaceFromYouNoMore



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: And I’m A Uni Student Of English, Brief Appearance By Blueshirt OC, Brief Unforgiving Appearance By Odo Who Deserves More, Budding Romance!, Hackneyed Romance Like The Kind You See In Rom Coms, Humor/Romance, Keiko Banter, M/M, Now That’s A Relevant Pun, Romantic Gestures, Secret Gifts, So. There, The Writer Gratuitously Shows Off Their Poetry Knowledge, These Pancakes Are Fluffy As Fuck, Valentine’s Day, Which Is What I Write Now To Repent For My Sins, is it an OC if you literally just made them up and don’t intend on ever writing about them again?, meaning: Hey Everyone! I Read A Donne Poem Once, meaning: The Writer Had Fun Writing Keiko
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-03
Updated: 2019-04-03
Packaged: 2020-01-04 08:54:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18340337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IHidMyFaceFromYouNoMore/pseuds/IHidMyFaceFromYouNoMore
Summary: A mysterious gesture, amorous in nature, is delivered to Julian. Whooo could it pooossibly be frooom? Oh God, the suspense is kiiillllinggg meee(Yes, I wrote a Valentine’s fic at Christmas. What is this, a time-traveling episode?)





	Flowers?

**Author's Note:**

> This is a re-upload from my old account that I have deleted. The work upload was originally on December 26, 2018, and I have left it untouched so it is exactly as it was. This btw is why my little joke in the summary doesn't make sense now lol

Julian was awoken by Royka, a medical intern aboard the station, frantically telling him through the commbadge lying on his dresser to come down to the infirmary immediately. 

It appeared that earlier that same morning when Royka was opening the infirmary up, they had frozen at the sight of a mysterious object atop the examination-table inside. Knowing what the bomb-policy for the station dictated, they had called for the Constable first. Odo and Royka had been standing outside the doors from afar, trying to decide what the wrapped, inverted cone could possibly be, and whether or not it was a threat. Odo then made the decision to have Julian called down, in case he had left it himself in the infirmary the night before. 

Julian arrived at the ‘scene’, his collar still being adjusted mid-jog. “What’s this about, Odo?”

“As you can see through the door-slit here, it appears there has been left an unknown object in the infirmary. Do you know what it is?” Odo stated and questioned.  Julian put his sleep-filled eye to the opening, peering inside, and sure enough, they were right; there was something in there that Julian had definitely not left last night. 

He leaned back. “Well, it’s not mine.”

“And you were the last to leave the infirmary last night?” 

“Yes. And seeing as we don’t have any patients in the biobeds at the moment, there wouldn’t have been a guard or nurse present from 2300 to now.”

Odo made a contemplative noise. “Then we should synthesize the bomb-dog and examine the object. I’ll go find the nearest replicator.” Odo strode off, leaving Julian and his intern in the deserted hall.

“Do you think it’s dangerous, doctor? A bomb?” Royka, understandably nervous, asked. 

Julian rubbed his eyes a bit. “I don’t have the luxury of doubting it, unfortunately, Royka. As Starfleet personnel, we are under some level of threat at all times. And this, this object, it could just as well be a -“

Julian peered through the slit again, trying for a second look with fresher eyes. Something clicked, because he had definitely seen this exact shape before. Although it had been years since he had seen something like this in person, it was not exactly something that was abundant in space. 

It was because of the wrapping, seemingly silken purple paper around this uneven form, seemingly all balanced in a glass or a vase - and then the kicker: Julian could see a white rectangle attached to the side. A card. If his deductions were right, this ‘mysterious object’, was a bouquet of _flowers_.

He calculated the star date in his head to the approximate Earth date. “… Valentine’s. Of _course_.” He groaned.

Royka looked at him with even more worry. Julian stuttered an ‘uh’. “It’s - it’s nothing. I just have a strong feeling that there’s nothing to fear in there.”

Odo eventually returned with a bot to send in and scan the package. They watched, they waited, and it returned with a positive result. It was indeed not a bomb. But the bot couldn’t determine toxicity in this case, which meant that Julian went and found a hazmat suit to approach the thing with. Unfortunately, even his tricorder couldn’t tell him a thing about whether or not it was a bio-hazard, only that what was inside was of biological material, so Julian decided to peel apart the layers of silken paper(he had been right about the wrapping upon closer inspection). 

He uncovered the face of a flower, then another, and the rest of its friends, all tucked together in, yes, a bouquet. But Julian had no idea what kinds of flowers they were and the tricorder was not being helpful on the third try either. 

He announced to the Constable and Royka that they should probably get Keiko on it, have the plants beamed down to a vacant lab for her. Xenobotany was a little too far removed from Julian’s expertise, but he still felt guilty when he commed her so early in the morning. 

They had it beamed down immediately, and just as it was gone, Julian remembered that he had forgotten to examine the card. He shimmied out of his hazmat suit and went straight to the nearest replicator for as many raktajinos as he could carry.

 

\- - -

 

Keiko had summoned Julian to the lab not an hour later. She intercepted him in the hall outside the lab door. “Julian, it’s serious.” Keiko said with her straight face and tone.

His eyes widened. “So it _is_ a bio-hazardous weapon?”

“Oh, it’s serious alright.”

“Who do you think planted them there? Romulans? The Dominion? Cardassians?” Julian’s raktajino-fueled hands shook at the excitement.

“Can’t determine a point of origin, but the rumors are serious, Julian; you are going to be voted prom king this year.”

 

Julian did a double-take. “Hm?”

“Well, judging by the size of that bouquet, your admirers must be plenty and rabidly devoted. I think you’ve got a good shot at that crown, buddy.” 

 

Julian finally realized he was being teased. “ _Keiko_.”

“What I mean, is congrats on the beautiful flowers and heartfelt card you got for this Valentine’s Day! You have a devious devotee, it seems: considering they broke into the infirmary without tripping any wires, avoiding Odo’s gaze and any security-cameras, just to deliver you flowers.”

Julian frowned. “They’re for _me_? How do you know?”

“Doesn’t take a genius to read the card on the side. I know it’s against Starfleet law to open another person’s messages, I figured that since we were under a ‘bio-hazardous threat’ that we might slip those formalities for the sake of examination.” Keiko finally opened the door, leading Julian inside. She plucked the card from the table and handed it to him. 

 

It had been in an envelope, opened at the seams by Keiko of course, and inside there was a dove-white card. Julian parted it and was immediately met with a handwritten text that read:

 

_Dear love, for nothing less than thee_

_Would I have broke this happy dream;_

_It was a theme_

_For reason, much too strong for fantasy,_

_Therefore thou wak'd'st me wisely; yet_

_My dream thou brok'st not, but continued'st it._

_Thou art so true that thoughts of thee suffice_

_To make dreams truths, and fables histories;_

_Enter these arms, for since thou thought'st it best,_

_Not to dream all my dream, let's act the rest._

 

_To Julian._

 

It was an excerpt from John Donne’s ‘The Dream’, the first stanza specifically. Although it took Julian a moment to remember all that, he hadn’t really been picking up his Donne datarod in maybe a year or so. Julian was secretly sweating in his boots and burning in his ears at the thought that this was really happening. _Flowers. A card. The drama of the delivery. I thought I had graduated school years ago._

 

“Can you at least tell me something about what kind of flowers they are?” Julian caressed a meaty petal absent-mindedly. He had never seen anything like these before. They were marbled cream and fuchsia in each leaf, sprouting a glossy petal in every direction. In the center, a vibrant blue puff of pollen that practically glowed.

  
Keiko pointed to the one he had his hands on. “A Tuccian Fruwrep. They’re the majority in this bouquet of course, but your admirer has interspersed it with some nice Yksi grass. Very fragrant. And lovely, in my opinion. Also none of them are grown, they’ve been replicated. But they are also flowers that specifically do not wilt easily, so you’ll be looking at them for the next five to six months, you lucky dog.”

“And they’re not poisonous?” Julian said as he was lowering his nose into their scent. It felt like he was inhaling a heady meadow.

“No. Specifically non-poisonous to humans. Your secret lover has done their research well. Maybe they’re a botanist. Or a gardener. But we don’t have any of those on the station besides me, as far as I know.”

Julian frowned ambivalently. “I just don’t know how to figure out who the sender is. Do you think if I could access the replicator they might have used that their replication history would tell me if they had made these?”

Keiko nodded. “Yeah, probably. Of course, that would probably also be a breach of privacy to hack into someone’s history. Why don’t you just ask whoever it might be? That’s more in the spirit of Valentine’s.”

Julian sighed. Of course Keiko knew what holiday it was today, she probably had it plotted into her calendar.

“Or do you have so many potential candidates that you’re growing tired just at the thought of running around the station to ask them all?” Keiko gave him a slanted smirk.

 

Julian lifted the hefty bouquet, a little taken back by the weight of it. He made for the door, but stopped in the doorway to turn at Keiko.

“By the way, we didn’t have prom at my school. It’s an entirely Americanised event, for your information.”

Keiko was already back to her PADD, not looking up. “Yeah, but, let’s be real here: you probably would have been prom king if you had one, Julian.”

He opened his mouth to say something but stopped and went out the door with his proverbial tail between his legs. _Fair enough._

 

\- - -

 

Garak delicately drizzled some more yamok sauce over his zabo trotters. Julian looked at him until Garak finally looked up at him too. “Something the matter?”

 

Julian pretended to be casual. “Not much, only I had the _strangest_ morning in the infirmary…”

“Oh, do tell.”

“Mh, you see, I woke two hours before my shift to my commbadge pinging; turns out, my intern, Royka -“

“The jittery Andorian?”

“Yes. They’d found a _mysterious_ object in the infirmary when they were opening up for the day. Royka immediately got Odo out there before they thought to comm me and see if it was mine. I get down there, and I of course had no idea how it got there or what it was, so Odo gets out the bomb-dog -“

“The what?”

“It’s the bot for bomb-detection.”

“Oh, I see. Continue, please.”

“He runs the scans, turns out: it’s biological in composition. So I, at 0600 in the morning, have to step into a hazmat suit and try to examine it only to find… it’s a bouquet of flowers.”

Garak’s face lit up. “ _Flowers_?”

“Flowers. And so, we had to send them to Keiko to make sure they weren’t a trap and full of deadly pollen or something.”

“But of course they weren’t, or else you wouldn’t be having lunch with me right now.”

“No, Garak. Because they really were just a vase of flowers wrapped up. Completely harmless. Apparently some Tuccian Fruwreps and Yksi grass, quite nice and fragrant. They keep for a long time, according to Keiko.”

“Well, then, what did you do with them?”

“Had them incinerated, of course. No-one would lay claim to them, couldn’t have them filling up the infirmary: they would just get in my elbow-space.”

Julian watched, dead-panned, as Garak’s face went from interested listener to something as if a glass was breaking inside him. “Incinerated? Really?”

Julian blinked, dragging it out. But he broke too soon. “No, of course not! I took them back from the lab to my quarters. They’ll look nice on my nightstand.” He smiled.

Garak didn’t show his relief, but Julian knew it was there. “So you ended up adopting them, then? Wasn’t there any indication that they could have been a present to someone on your staff?”

“Well, actually, there was a note that came with it. Unfortunately, the handwriting was so slanted and garbled it was impossible to make out.”

Garak looked at him pointedly over his glass. “Doctor, you are terrible at lying. You ought to give it a rest.”

Julian couldn’t help but laugh. “Okay, it was this poem. No name signed from the sender, though. A shame. But it did say ‘To Julian’ at the bottom. But that could mean … anyone.” He was having a little too much fun with this.

“A poem, you say? What sort of poetry?”

“That’s the strangest part: it’s an excerpt from a seventeenth century human poet, the reverent John Donne. He wrote more than just a few racy love poems in his day, and this one is no exception. My mystery gift-giver copied an entire stanza from ‘The Dream’ in that card. I will be surely impressed when I find out who they are.”

Garak nodded, thoughtful but blasé all in one. “And I’ll be impressed if you find out who your enigmatic suitor is. Judging by their taste in poetry, they sound like a human.” 

Julian steepled his fingers, also nodding thoughtfully. “Hm. By the way, are you going to be working late tonight?”

“Oh, I’m not counting on it. I was dreaming of an early turn-in for once, I had such an uneasy sleep last night.”

“Oh, good.” Julian looked at his wrist for a watch that wasn’t there. “Looks like I need to get back to work; see you around, Garak.” 

And he patted the table and got up with a confident stride for the infirmary, not looking back at his lunch-partner, with a plan already budding in his mind.

 

\- - -

 

The clothier shop was shrouded in darkness when Julian approached it. The Promenade had long since closed for the night. With no-one else around, Julian used his medical override for the doors and slipped inside. 

He went straight for the professional-sized replicator, turning it back online. Why Julian’s medical override also worked for prying into private replicators’ histories, he had no idea. But it worked, surprisingly, and he accessed the menu. 

Julian scrolled through the lines of data from the past few days. It showed the encrypted abbreviations for the orders as so:

 

**ZEPH, MIDNBLUE: 2x1 m**

**VELV, DISTR, HKS GREEN: 2x3 m**

**R.LEAF TEA, HOT, L, SYRUP x2: 1**

**GNGH, TYR, BR RED: 2x1 m**

**VELV, PLUSH, LILAC, MG: 1400: 2x6 m**

**HASPRT, VEG, COLD: 1**

**ROK, JCE, COLD, XL: 1**

**THRD, CTN, MIDNBLUE: 8 m**

**THRD, ACRYL, GLIT ROSE: 4 m**

**FUR, SHLT, PIEBLD: 2x3 m**

 

When Julian matched it to the stardate, nothing showed as having been replicated in the dead of the night before. Then again, Garak could have replicated them whenever, given that the flowers keep for so long. 

Julian slumped his spine in defeat. _So it’s probably not Garak. Unless he has gotten himself a replicator big enough for flowers that size in his quarters, which is doubtful. Or he replicated them elsewhere to hide his tracks. But that’s a bit far to go, isn’t it?_

 

“Good evening, Julian.”

Julian made an undignified sound in his motion of whipping around to see who was addressing him. It was, of course, Garak, looking as sharp as usual. He wasn’t even in his nightgown, as he had said he would be with all his talk of retiring early to bed. But Julian was in no position to question Garak’s whereabouts at the moment; he was the one caught with both feet in beartraps, standing in the tailoring-shop after midnight, hands all over the replicator and no alibi to present. Julian instinctively leaned against the machine to appear more casual. _‘Psh, I was just taking a night-stroll, I thought I saw something inside your shop so I thought I’d investigate …’? Yeah, like that’s going to work on Garak. Garak, of all the people I will have to seriously lie to. Nice job covering your angles, Julian._

 

“I…” Julian began, interrupting himself with a nervous laugh. Garak laughed with him, strangely enough.

“I’m glad to see you, doctor, but I must ask; what are you doing here with my replicator?”

Julian froze as he debated inside how much of the truth he should tell. But before he could stutter anything out, Garak reverted back to his soft voice, telling him: “Be honest with me now.” 

 

Julian’s hands hung by his sides with a sigh. “Did you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Oh, you know! The big drama of the flowers; did you do it?” Julian stressed the last four words emphatically in his frustration.

“Did I deliver the flowers to you?”

“Yes, did you replicate them and write the card and then deliver them to the infirmary? That’s all I wanted to know. Honestly, Garak.”

Garak folded his hands in front of himself. “Yes. But judging by your current exasperated reaction, I am guessing they were not worth the trouble.”

 

Julian finally felt all tension leave his body. He laughed again but not nervously now. “No! Garak, I really liked it. I did. I can’t believe you got away with it all!”

All that was seen in the room were the things lit up from the dim light of the replicator, leaving only outlines of Garak. Julian couldn’t tell his finer expressions, only the broad body language of him as he stood, immovable, in front of him. But Garak’s smile was always wide and visible, impossible to miss, and even wider now. Neither knew if they should be the first to go forward. 

 

Julian balanced on the balls of his feet that wouldn’t move, rolling around a bit while his heart made him sweat. He remembered the flowers again. The card. It made him break into a proper smile. Then he couldn’t hold back a little laugh and had to rub his face in his hand to conceal it poorly. He knew Garak was looking at him, smiling, probably wondering what was so funny.

 

“Enter these arms, for since thou thought'st it best, 

Not to dream all my dream, let's act the rest.” 

 

Julian looked up again, the world’s biggest smile on his face. His arms were wide open. 

Garak braved the distance, albeit cautiously, and stepped into Julian’s arms, letting him close his hands around the fabric of Garak’s tunic and lay their cheeks against each other. It was like the room was buzzing uncontrollably, Julian let his shoes touch Garak’s in an effort to step even closer as they embraced. He felt Garak lean his face into Julian’s hair, his hands clung to his back as well. It felt - easy. 

_We should’ve been doing this a long time ago_.

 

So quiet, too. “I thought you hated Donne.”

“Hm?”

“Why write me a card with one of his poems if you don’t like him? Don’t think I don’t remember the lunch-hour I spent talking about his poems where you dismissed them as ‘flowery, and yet too tepid’.”

“I just knew you would like it. That was what - mattered.”

“Really?”

“And he was one of the first of your Earth artists you introduced me to. It was during our first lunch together, you gave me a datarod with some of his poems.”

“One of which was ‘The Dream’.”

“Yes. And you said I should read it if I felt like it. Then I knew I had to go and get some datarods processed so I could repay the kindness.”

“Oh, _wow_. That was how we started our cultural exchange.”

“Oh, yes.”

“And I can’t believe you remembered Valentine’s. I don’t even - wait, did I ever actually tell you about that?”

“Not - entirely. You mentioned it once, not by name, so I went through quite a few Earth traditions in the databanks before I could get the details.”

“… Incredible.”

“You’ve expressed your inability to believe it all several times now, dear.”

“Yes, and I still can’t believe how you got those flowers…”

“Why, I replicated them, of course.”

“But your replicator history didn’t show any floral arrangements?”

“Although it is illegal to delete one’s replicator history, it is not impossible to alter it to, say, make it look like you have merely replicated a meter of Tyrian gingham…”

For this, Julian pulled away just far enough to look at Garak’s smug face. He was determined to shoot him a shocked and lawful look, but as Julian had leaned back, he had managed to briefly touch his nose to Garak’s as the tailor accidentally turned his head at the same time, making them both laugh instead. Julian could see the satisfaction blooming in Garak’s eyes. He hoped Garak could see the same in his.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I crammed as many flower-puns in this fic as I could and i still feel like I could’ve gotten more in......
> 
> If you noticed the secret foot-fetish meme joke I wrote into this fic, I will paypal you 10$ as I always do for anyone that finds the easter eggs in my fics
> 
> And furthermore!: Anyone that can guess what some of the replicator abbreviations reference will receive an additional 10$ (not all of them are actual trek things tho, I made up the ‘Tyrian gingham’, for one(although gingham is a real type of fabric: it is the ‘picnic blanket’ type pattern) and some of the others are just things that sound like they might be Earth sowing materials, so it’s harder and doesn’t make as much sense lol)
> 
> btw: all’y’all should check out Donne’s poems, they truly are saucy. Beside reading the rest of 'The Dream', I recommend 'The Good Morrow', which I now, late in the evening as I have just finished the ending and am writing this note, realized that I '''accidentally''' reference in the last two lines of this fic holy shit how does this even happen is this what it's like to feel like an Intellectual


End file.
